Dan Price

So, Friday I hit the road at around noon and drove 6ish hours to Poughkeepsie to see Weird Alin concert. Aside from my inability to find a rest stop on 17 and my E-ZPass not working on the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge, the drive was uneventful. I showed up at moosez's door at about 6:30 and misch arrived about 15 minutes later. I brought my Airzooka along and we had fun blasting each other.

We wanted to eat before the concert, but by the time we came up with a plan, it was too late to execute it, so we skipped dinner and headed straight to the show.

The venue looked more suited to host a basketball game or computer trade show than a concert, but I'll take what I can get. At least the folding chairs they set up on the floor had nice comfy 4-inch cushions on the seats.

A few minutes after the 8pm start time, Jimmy Fallon opened the show with a 20-minute set, mostly consisting of stuff he had done on SNL's Weekend Update. Still very entertaining though and he did a good job of warming up the crowd.

...which was too bad because after he left the stage and the audience was all hyped up, the house lights came up and we were left to wait another 20 minutes. Someone needs to be brought up to speed on the concept of an opener.

Finally Al's show-opening recorded music (I wish I could say what it's from, but I'm afraid I'm not as familiar with most of his earlier stuff) starts blaring over the speakers. I'm pretty sure it was the same music played before the show I saw in Rochester 3 years ago. The high frequencies are so overwhelming that it makes your ears desensitize themselves to it... so by the time Weird Al finally takes the stage, your hearing is already temporarily impaired.

I'm not sure why he likes his sound that way. The super-loud high frequencies muddy up the mid-range frequencies, making vocals nearly impossible to hear. (Jeremy disputes this theory, claiming that the midrange speakers just sucked, or were even blown.) I'm all for loud music that you can feel. To me that means lots of bass, but just enough mid and high frequencies so that everything can be heard clearly, not so much that you're causing distortions inside everyone's ear canals. It would be fine if that only happened for momentary "loud parts" of songs, but it was constant, through the whole concert, even on "quiet" songs like his parody of Piano Man.

Anyway, what this all boils down to is that despite how loud the concert was, I couldn't hear it. Fortunately I got his Poodle Hat album for my birthday so I was already familiar with those songs, plus a few of the songs he played from other albums, but there were a handful of songs I had never heard before. And I still haven't, because I couldn't understand a single word he said.

Oh well, I'm still glad I went. After the show we ate at Perkins then went back to Jeremy's place and crashed. But as is usual for me these days, I wasn't able to fall asleep. I just lied there on the couch for hours, before finally losing consciousness shortly after the sunrise started to hint of its approach. Of course, Paul and Jeremy were up an about only an hour or two after that, so I didn't really get much sleep at all.

Paul had to take off to meet some other friends (the traitor) but I was sticking around because quilynn and possibly tenthz were planning to visit in the afternoon.

First, Jeremy decided to beat me at tennis. If I recall correctly, we played one set, which he won in the 7th game. I actually don't remember winning more than one game, but that wouldn't make sense because then the set would've been over when he won 4, right? And I know we played more games than that. Oh well, not important. He won. :-P

Catherine showed up an hour or two later, followed closely behind by Cindi. They both got greeted by the Airzooka as well. After a long exercise in indifference, we ended up deciding to go eat at Ruby Tuesday and get ice cream afterwards, then go play mini-golf at Fun Central. Catherine picked up the bill at Tuesdays... Thanks! Must be nice having an income and no living expenses. :-P Then I got a small vanilla cone dipped in peanut butter, after a misunderstanding with the ice cream stand that listed "sprinkles, dips and toppings" among the things you can put on a cone. Even though the only list of "toppings" they showed was "sundae toppings", they didn't apply. So, what are these "toppings" you can put on cones? I never did find out.

Then we went to Fun Central where Jeremy beat us all a mini-golf (but only because of a lucky hole-in-one). Many of the holes were just downright frustrating. We made up our own "redo" rule because on several of them, the ball would roll all the way back to you in 9 out of 10 shots. Anyway, I was only 3 shots behind Jeremy, but Cindi and Catherine trailed behind with scores too embarrassing to mention here. :)

And then Jeremy beat me in air hockey twice. The second time we both played with our weak hand. I guess luck doesn't care what hand you use, eh Jer? :)

We didn't get back to Jeremy's place until about 8pm. I had hoped to be on the road by then so I could get home in time to catch the Firemen's Carnival fireworks at midnight. Well, despite Jeremy's claim that it could be driven in 4 hours, I didn't make it. But then, I don't drive like Jeremy. I didn't expect it to still take me FIVE hours though. It took around 6 on the way out, but that included a few traffic jams, 4 rest stops, and some wrong turns. I drove back non-stop at constant high speeds with no slow traffic or wrong turns, and only did as good as 5 hours. Weird. Fortunately I didn't feel sleepy at all on the road. I was really worried about that since I only had an hour or two of sleep the night before and wore myself out playing tennis. But I had Code Red by my side.

Needless to say, I missed the fireworks, getting home at about 1am. I slept until almost 3pm.

Re:

::tries to defend self::Yeah, but I mostly knew the route. Nearly 3.5 of the supposed 5 hours is spent on the Mass Pike which I also take to get to RIT, and I knew exactly where the exit was for the Taconic, so I go fast on the Pike when I can, then when I got to the Taconic which is about 1.5 hrs of the trip (I think) I went muuch slower there.

Meanwhile, Cindi has the opposite, sorta. She's not used to the Pike so she has to go slower. 8-}::/defense::

Tosser?

my reactions/thoughts.

I'm all for loud music that you can feel. To me that means lots of bass, but just enough mid and high frequencies so that everything can be heard clearly, not so much that you're causing distortions inside everyone's ear canals.I agree.

...so I didn't really get much sleep at all.:-/

Paul had to take off to meet some other friends (the traitor)...LOL

I recall correctly, we played one set, which he won in the 7th game. How many games are there in a set? I always get confused... I need to find my tennis racquet.

Re: my reactions/thoughts.

I've never committed it to memory either, but Jeremy explained that when it was 3-1, I was playing to "stay in the set", which I assume means that once he wins 4 games, no matter how many I had won, the set would be his. So from that, I assume that a set can be anywhere from 4 to 7 games. But the 7th game is only ever a tie-breaker.

I may have incorrectly remembered the score from the time he said that, so this might all be wrong. lol

Now I feel compelled to look up tennis scoring online.

Aha...

"A set is made up of six games. In order to win the set you must win by at least two games. One can win a set at a score of 6-0,6-1,6-2, 6-3,6-4,7-5, or 7-6. In order to win 7-6 a tiebreaker must be played out." --allsands.com

I still don't understand the score-based way of figuring out which side to serve from. Well, I understand the concept, but it just doesn't come naturally to me to figure it out that way. I just alternate, and when I forget where the last serve was, I leave it to the other person to calculate it. :)

Re: my reactions/thoughts.

*nod*

Jim and I had the same thoughts as you did on the noise distortion when we went to the weird al concert at the Turning Stone Casino earlier this month. Jim thought it was because the speakers they had weren't good enough. I'm just learning about good speaker systems and such so I couldn't say much except the distortion was absolutely awful. The first song he did at the concert I went to was a parody of an eminem song, for the life of me I couldn't understand any of the words he said in the song.

Re: *nod*

Well, the speakers are either really good or really bad. If they're really bad, the distortion is in the speakers. If they're really good, they're creating intense soundwaves that become distorted in our ears.

As for that Eminem parody, it's called Couch Potato and it's all about watching TV, but since it's sung in Eminem's style, most of the words are said in weird ways that are hard to understand even when you can hear them clearly. :-P